Tish Marches On (8 page)

To our bewilderment was now added anxiety, and we spent the remainder of the morning searching for our beloved companion. It was, I think, in Kensington Gardens that Tish’s keen eyes at last saw a horse quietly grazing on the bank of the Round Pond, and a moment later we saw Aggie.

To our amazement she was standing in the water up to her waist, and behaving in a most peculiar manner. She would stand for a moment, take a firm grip on her nose and then disappear entirely. This she repeated several times; nor did she desist when we approached the bank.

It was indeed some time before she even noticed us. Then she sneezed several times and said in a tragic voice:

“I’be losth theb agaid.”

“Lost what?” said Tish.

“By teeth,” she replied, and dived once more.

She discovered them at last and, as she was both lame and completely exhausted, we placed her in my cart and started for home.

On the way she told her painful story. Stripped of the coryza which afflicts her at such times, it was quite simple. She had merely, on losing us, wandered about until she found herself outside the gate of Buckingham Palace. Here, to her surprise, an excited-looking man in black satin knee breeches had seen her and led her inside.

There she found a number of Indian rajahs and so on, dressed much as she was; and before she knew it someone was holding a horse in front of her and telling her to get on.

The rest, alas, we knew.

T
HAT IS REALLY THE
end of my record, and I do not believe that Tish was greatly surprised when, on reaching home, we found Inspector Jewkes waiting for us inside.

He was red with fury, and with a roar he rushed forward and caught Tish by the arm.

“Well, madam,” he said ferociously, “you have had your little joke. Now I will have mine.”

But he did not have it just then. Undoubtedly Tish was in an extremely nervous state, although usually the mildest of women. His onslaught apparently startled her, and with a jerk she tore my street broom from my hand and threatened him with it.

He ran straight into it, and we were all astonished to see him fall down and lie still.

This is the so-called “Brutal Attack On Scotland Yard Inspector,” but the whole idea is preposterous. Nor did we cut him on the lip, as reported. He, himself, struck the fender as he dropped.

As for saying that we were preparing to attack him again when he recovered consciousness, I have never heard such nonsense. Aggie’s action in seizing the poker was pure self defense.

But it was a comfort, on being taken to Scotland Yard, to find ourselves facing the same commissioner as before. He seemed amused about something, and he surveyed the Inspector’s lip with interest.

“Injuries received in the line of duty, Jewkes?” he inquired.

“Knocked down by these women—if they
are
women, in those clothes!” the Inspector snarled. “And a fine bunch of wildcats they are, sir. First I’m locked up in a damp cellar and then I’m attacked. They’d be put away for life, if I had my way.”

“Tut, tut,” said the Commissioner. “We have to allow for the American sense of humor, Jewkes.”

The Inspector fairly swelled with rage.

“All I can say, sir—if you think it’s funny—”

The Commissioner looked at us and coughed.

“Well, it has its aspects, Jewkes,” he said. “It has its aspects.”

But at last we were able to tell the Commissioner our story, from first to last, and he seemed much interested. Indeed, he said that it sounded better than fiction.

“Not often we
get
such things here,” he said. “Very drab life usually. Very drab.” Then he brightened. “So you locked old Jewkes up! Do him good probably. Get pretty well fed up with him myself.”

Also sometime during that interval they brought in Mr. Smith, and asked him if he knew us. He seemed literally to swell with rage.

“Know them!” he shouted. “Do I know them! Listen, I’ve been chasing them from New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to somebody’s waxworks. They stole the best blimp ever built, and now it’s beyond hope. Gone, destroyed!”

“Oh,” said the Commissioner with an air of relief. “Then you don’t expect me to blow it up for you.”

But the really important incident occurred when they brought in Bettina Pell. She went quite pale when she saw us, and also when she looked at the Inspector’s lip. It was, however, what she said that left us thunderstruck.

“Jim Carlisle had played a nasty trick on me,” she said, in a small voice. “So I wanted to get even. It was—well, it was really a joke.”

“You get that, Jewkes?” said the Commissioner. “The American sense of humor again. Eh, what?”

“I got it, right enough,” said Inspector Jewkes grimly.

Bettina looked frightened.

“That’s all,” she said. “I only meant to shut them up overnight and give them a scare. I’d told them that the women from the
Snark
were hiding there, and I showed them an agreement signed by Miss Carberry. So they went, and—well, that’s all.”

She then began to cry, and said that we had taken matters into our own hands and locked up Inspector Jewkes too. And that we had lost the key, and anyhow she couldn’t let them out or the Inspector would have arrested her.

“And I had my Coronation piece to do,” she said.

The Commissioner looked interested again.

“Ah,” he said. “So they lost the key, eh? Then how the devil
did
you get out, Jewkes?”

Then we saw the Inspector smile for the first and only time.

“The ladies had left us a can opener,” he said.

Well, as I have said, that is really all of the story. Save for one thing. Late that afternoon Charlie Sands appeared, and after looking us over, disclaimed us entirely. But I find that I omitted what he said before he departed.

“Not today,” he said, “but sometime, when I am feeling stronger, I want to hear just why you locked up my camera crew and damned near ruined me.”

That, I think, completes the record. We were released that evening, but we had great difficulty in getting back into our flat, the head porter at first refusing to admit us. When at last he recognized us he leered most unpleasantly.

“Look as though you’d been ’aving a night out, not ’alf,” he said.

Tish was very silent that night, but how thankful we were to get out of those terrible clothes, and having bathed, to sit quietly over a cup of hot tea. But we did not go to bed. The noise overhead prohibited it.

We were sitting by the fire, Tish knitting and Aggie with her feet in a hot mustard foot bath, when we heard the door open overhead, and the noise coming down the stairs. It was apparently all the crowd from above, and it was singing: “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here.”

I tried to close the door, but it was too late. They were already coming into the room, and to our amazement Inspector Jewkes and the Carlisle man had Bettina Pell by the arms. They shoved her forward and then stood back.

“All right,” said Mr. Carlisle. “Now, my girl, make your little speech.”

I must say she looked very pretty, although rather scared. But she stepped forward and said:

“I’m sorry, I’m frightfully sorry for getting you into trouble. And—”

There she stopped, and the Carlisle man prompted her. “And I promise—”

“And I promise never to do it again.”

“Go on,” said Mr. Carlisle.

She swallowed hard.

“I am a mean and vindictive person. I have no professional ethics and no sense of decency. And I—I forget the rest of it, Jim.”

“No, you don’t,” he said firmly. “Get on with it.”

“And I promise to be a good girl hereafter so that Jim Carlisle may marry me someday.”

“Right,” said the Carlisle man. And with that they all turned solemnly and went up the stairs again. …

It seems a long time now since all that happened. It turned out that Mr. Smith’s dirigible was insured, and the case never came to trial. But now and then I have dreams, when I see Aggie so mysteriously holding her nose and diving into the Round Pond. Or Tish, marching on in her policeman’s uniform, while I trundle that awful cart before me.

But my real nightmare is of standing rigid in Madame Tussaud’s waxworks, and hearing that wretched little boy bleat:

“This lady winked, mother.”

Now and then Charlie Sands comes in for a glass of our blackberry cordial, and only the other night he observed that Bettina had just been married. We were not surprised, but Tish remarked that she hoped she would make a good wife.

“He was a good-looking man,” she said thoughtfully. “And he was firm. I am sure that she needs firmness.”

Charlie Sands stared at her.

“Who on earth are you talking about?” he inquired.

“Didn’t you say she had married Jim Carlisle?”

“I didn’t say,” he observed dryly. “As a matter of fact she married Jewkes.”

That is all. But the other day I was helping Tish to clean out her desk and came across a small slip of paper. It was a list, and it read as follows: Bottled water, blankets, bread, candles, matches, sardines, and can opener.

I looked at Tish, but she had not noticed it; and so, unseen, I was able to throw it away.

O
NLY THE OTHER DAY
our dear Tish observed that the attempt to help humanity was always an ungrateful one. To support this she quoted the incident of the mouse, and the attitude of Charlie Sands, her nephew, when he found her tied to the bed in the psychopathic ward of our local hospital. She had been on the board of that hospital for years, but no one had even recognized her. As to Charlie Sands himself, his manner was cold and even resentful when, having at last discovered her, he stood over her bed and gazed down at her.

“What does this mean?” was his opening speech, in a stern voice. “Open your eyes and look at me.
What
about an elephant?”

And when she tried to tell him about where she had left Aggie, and about the elephant and so on, the doctor—who should have known better—said that this was merely a delusion. Nor were things better about the peanuts, although that should have been obvious.

“All right,” said Charlie Sands. “I get some of it. According to you Aggie has been captured by an elephant and Lizzie has lost her hat. But you are here. What I want to know is why you are here. And how.”

“I was merely trying to get some peanuts,” said Tish coldly. “What is so extraordinary about that?”

“That is what I am asking,” he observed. “The fact that you broke into the stand in the middle of the night to do so is not unusual. Nor even the fact that a police officer claims that you broke his nose. All I am asking is why? Why are you here? And why, for instance, the peanuts?”

And then Tish became her old self, after a night of anxiety and hazard such as few women could have endured.

“Don’t be a fool,” she said sharply. “For the elephant, of course.”

It was I believe at that time that the nurse brought him the aromatic ammonia.

As Tish has said since, it should all have been perfectly clear to him by that time. After all, we had spent the entire night attempting to help him, and that at his own request. As to his observation—made later—that the broken fire plug flooded a number of cellars, all damage has since been paid. And I still maintain that resistance to unjustified capture is a citizen’s duty. We have all seen Officer O’Brien since, and if his nose was broken by the rim of the butterfly net it certainly shows no sign of it.

Actually it began with Charlie Sands’ request that we find a mouse for him. We had dined with Tish that night, and Hannah, Tish’s maid, had baked one of her celebrated pecan-nut pies. What with that and a glass each of blackberry cordial we were in a contented frame of mind. Then the doorbell rang, and it was Charlie Sands, accompanied by a very pretty girl.

It appeared that her name was Paula, and that her father was the managing editor of Charlie Sands’ newspaper. Also that she herself did the society column on the paper. But I must admit that we were surprised at the object of their visit.

They wanted a mouse!

“Preferably a live one,” said Charlie Sands. “Certainly one of a bland expression, undamaged by the usual sort of trap. A domestic mouse, even a good family mouse, with the usual fangs, whiskers and so on. The taxidermist insists on these.”

“What taxidermist?” Tish inquired.

“The one who is going to mount the head,” he said.

I dare say we looked bewildered, for Paula hastened to explain. Her father had lately returned from a hunting trip in Africa, bringing a number of trophies, such as mounted heads and antlers. What was more, he talked of nothing else, and something had to be done about it.

“He’s driven mother crazy,” she said. “You know how it is: zebra rugs, lionskins hither and yon, a stuffed giraffe with a ten-foot neck in the corner, an elephant’s foot and leg for an umbrella stand and a hippopotamus over the mantel. And it’s as bad at the office. So now we want a mouse.”

Tish dropped her knitting and stared at them.

“But why a mouse?” she inquired. “A bushel of moths would be better.”

They liked their own plan better, however, the idea being that all the office force give him a bang-up dinner with speeches, and then present him the head of a mouse, properly mounted. It appeared that he
had
killed a mouse some days before, but had fed it to the office cat.

“It’s to be a hint,” said Charlie Sands. “A hint that we’re fed up, as you may say. But now that we need one we can’t find a mouse. How about this building? Does the janitor have mice, or does he keep a cat?”

“He keeps a cat,” Tish informed him.

Charlie Sands then gave a hollow groan and said that this was Friday and they had to have the mouse by Monday. Only there were no mice.

“It’s a crying evil,” he said. “There must be millions of cats about. When I think of all the poor little
Mus musculus
—or whatever the plural is—hounded by millions of cats, it seems both cruel and unfair.”

In the end they asked us if we would undertake the commission, all else having failed, and Tish finally agreed. Only Aggie protested, having a terror of the creatures, but Tish ignored her.